Research:
Gerontology, intergenerational relations, social networks, informal care of elders, immigrant health, rural elders, health beliefs and behaviors, culture and aging.

Teaching:
Social Gerontology, Aging and Culture, Aging and the Family, Women's Issues in Aging and Social Inequalities, Aging and Popular Culture. My central teaching goals are to encourage students to think outside their comfort zone of normalcy, and to critically consider their own and others' views on families and aging. My teaching aims include providing students with opportunities to learn about family diversity, aging and culture, and intergenerational relations. I firmly believe that aging is not simply a chronological fact but a socially defined arena of processes, interactions, and events that occur within particular contexts of family, history, culture, and society.

Interests:
Family exchanges, intergenerational relations (especially family caregiving), culture and aging, and immigrant and refugee health. I strongly believe that research must be relevant to the lives of the research participants. It must benefit them in some way, whether through improved policies, education, or, as in the case of a group of Cambodian refugee families with whom I work, making others aware of who they are and why they are in the United States.

Education:

Selected Publications/Presentations:

2008. Denise C. Lewis, Types, meanings and ambivalence in intergenerational exchanges among Cambodian refugee families in the United States. Ageing and Society. 28(5) 693-716.

2007. Denise C. Lewis, A hierarchy of medicine: Health strategies of elder Khmer refugees in the United States. The Qualitative Report. 12(2) 146-165.

2006. John van Willigen and Denise Clark Lewis, The Cultural Context of Aging, H. Yoon and J. Hendricks (Eds.), Handbook on Asian Aging, Amityville NY: Baywood.

2005. Nancy Schoenberg and Denise C. Lewis, Ageism in Cross-Cultural Perspective, The Concise Encyclopedia of Ageism.

2001. Denise C. Lewis, From Cambodia to the United States: The Disassembly, Reconstruction, and Redefinition of Khmer Identity, Southern Anthropologist, Vol. 28, No. 1, Pg. 28-49.